The United States’ drive to transition its economy to run on 100-percent renewable energy has made impressive strides. Since 2010, the share of U.S. power that is generated from renewable sources has more than doubled to 18 percent of all electricity consumption.
Fueled by technological advances, that pace of expansion is likely to continue. The cost of solar and wind power generation is now cheaper than fossil fuels, even more so in a $6 per gallon environment. Also supporting expansion of renewables are the climate-friendly values of large swaths of the investment community, the power industry, and individual consumers, all of whom are voting with their wallets.
But these future solar farms have to be located somewhere, and the million-dollar question is, where? According to our calculations, it would take roughly 13 million acres of America’s land to generate 5 million GWh per year of additional electricity generation from green energy, enough to make the curren